God has done real-life miracles in my life. If you are a regular reader of this blog, you know, I have seen God’s power with my own eyes and could tell story-upon-story of all the miracles I have seen God do for me and my family. (So many of them I’ve shared on this blog.)
But today I want to share with you why I believe we’ve been able to experience God moving in such incredible, awe-inspiring ways… It’s a topic I’ve never talked about on this blog, but here it is: We are lavishly, uncomfortably, generous with our money.
(It’s not who we’ve always been, but it’s who we’ve become — And it’s changed everything.)
Warning: this post won’t be for everyone. Some people are so protective, so combative about their money, they can’t even have a conversation, much less read a blog post with an open mind. So if that’s the category you fall under, no offense… I’m sure you are wonderful, but to clarify this blog post is NOT for you. I’m also equally sorry, because your refusal to be generous is also your stamp of approval to live a life with a cap on all the miraculous things you will see God do… (or won’t do, for that matter.)
Because I don’t say this lightly or flippantly: Generosity can change your life! (As a fact, it has changed mine!)
Generosity has unlocked God’s blessing in our lives. It’s let loose a favor that is untamed and a story that is unrivaled. And hear me say this, God desires to do the same in your life in 2018.
The question I will pose to you today is: Have you given God enough space to move?
I don’t know what you are praying for in 2018. What miracle you are believing for, what areas of your life you need God to change His stance in, take up your cause, and come to your rescue in. Maybe there are bank accounts, pregnancy tests, and relationships around your family table, where you are desperate to see God’s redemptive power with your own eyes.
The degree in which God is capable of moving in our lives is directly dependent on how much room we give Him to do so. And that’s what generosity does, it makes space for God to move miraculously.
Making space for God to move is much like giving someone space to move in a game of kickball. You can kick a propelling ball, no matter how tight the space you have to work with, but if you give a person enough room to get a running start? Without a doubt, the further and more impressive the resulting kick.
I don’t know about you, but I need God to move impressively in my life in 2018. I need God to show up and move some M O U N T A I N S!
This year specifically, I’m asking God to move miraculously in my little family.
It’s been six years since we started trying for another child. (So long, that even complete strangers have given up on me ever having another kid. Inquiring at the grocery store… the school yard…heck, even while waiting for the bus…. why I “only wanted one”?)
The only thing worse than how wrong they are (I have desperately wanted another baby) is how impossibly far away it feels from that reality ever changing. Yet, here I am, believing for the miracle it would be that maybe, just maybe, 2018 is the year that it will.
Maybe like me, you feel foolish believing 2018 is the year it could change. But understand, God is inviting us right now to grab hold of the hope that, with Him, it could.
God wants to get a running start and kick it out of the park in your life…to show you — maybe for the first time — what your God is capable of doing (and to the full extent He is capable of doing it).
It’s what happened for David.
In 2 Samuel 24, we see David desperate for God to move B I G.
And God would…
…David just had to make a space big enough for God to move.
David knew, the greater you want to see God move, the greater the space you have to make. So when a huge epidemic swept through Jerusalem killing 70,000 people in one day, David did something surprising, He brought an offering to God… a generous one. Saying, these words that have wrecked me all week, “I’m not going to offer God, my God, sacrifices that are no sacrifice.” (vs.24)
Don’t miss this: because David needed God to move significantly, he gave sacrificially!
A sacrifice isn’t a special number, nor does it have to be a high one. But to be sure, a sacrifice is felt. Giving sacrificially is the act of letting go and emptying ourselves of something significantly valuable, and with it, making room for God to do something show-stoppingly miraculous.
The greater the space we make, the more miraculously and powerfully our God can move — David understood that. And move miraculously is exactly what God did!
Verse 25 says after seeing the sacrifice David had made, “God was moved by the prayers and that was the end of the disaster.”
Maybe like David, you’re not only praying for God to move in 2018, you’re praying for some things to come to an end in 2018. You’re praying for the end of what feels like God’s silence, the end of this brutally dry and lifeless season. You need this cloud to lift, your most desperate prayers to stop reverberating to the heavens, you need the direction of your life to change and for God to WAKE THE HECK UP and come to your defense. (If something doesn’t change soon, you don’t know how much longer you can hold on.) I get it. I’ve been there. On so many days, I am there…
I don’t know what it is that you need from God in 2018, nor do I know how big or small a sacrifice looks for you, all I know is when we are in need of something and we give generously, it captures God’s attention the same way a person praising Him, hands outstretched to the heavens in the middle of their storm, catches His eye and moves Him to tears in a crowded sanctuary.
Our generosity is an act of worship.
Our generosity compels our God to move impressively.
I’ve seen it time and time again.
So this week, my husband and I made space for God to move impressively in our lives in 2018, and we did so by giving to Meta’s very first Christmas offering (the church we are planting in NYC).
And can I tell you something? We gave so much, it took my breath away… (the greater the space we make, the more miraculously and powerfully our God can move, right?) Like, for real, we prayed out loud to God afterwards and multiple times I had to stop and gather myself, because I just couldn’t muster up enough air in my lungs to get the words out.
Yet, as we raised our humble and sacrificial gift to Him, I know with certainty that we caught His eye, even if only for a moment. It may have even moved Him to tears. But my continued prayer is that it moves my God to A C T I O N. (We’ve given Him the space to.)
And while, some might go as far to call a generous offering to God manipulation (in an attempt to coax away their own guilt for not having the courage to do the same) …I call it, making room for the miracle.
…Making room for the miracle it would be for God to meet us here in this space we’ve made, and blaze miraculously through all of the financial, medical, and logistical reasons why the miracle we are believing for will never happen, let alone in the next year.
The bigger the sacrifice we make, the more it will be missed. But the more it is missed, the greater the space for our God to move!
We’ve decided to give God enough space to get a running head start and hit it out of the park in our lives in 2018…
|| Have you? ||
Krista Ortiz 